Workstations · Servers · Racks · UPS
Professional IT hardware: workstations, servers, racks and power
Desktops and laptops, monitors, rack servers, 19-inch cabinets, UPS units and technical room equipment. We source Dell, HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu, HPE, Acer, Asus, MSI, Dynabook, Synology, QNAP, APC, Eaton and Vertiv, and we cost what online configurators leave out.
Size an estate, do not stack machines
Wholesaler buying guides size by user count and component specifications: ECC memory, expansion bays, network controllers, Xeon against EPYC. That is necessary and quite insufficient for arbitrating a budget.
The first criterion that genuinely moves three-year cost is homogeneity. Fifty identical machines deploy from one image, are repaired from one spares pool and are renewed as a block. Fifty different machines cost in administration time what they saved at purchase. That is why we work in batches, refurbished included.
The second is licensing. On a server, per-core licensing of hypervisors and server operating systems can weigh more than the price difference between two processors. A higher-core-count CPU can cost less to buy and far more to run. We compare hardware plus licences, not hardware alone.
The third is the length of free support after warranty. Some manufacturers keep supplying driver and firmware updates once the warranty has expired, others do not. On an estate meant to last five years, that difference appears on no datasheet and weighs heavily.
What configurators never calculate: thermal and electrical load
E-commerce listings almost always omit two quantities that decide whether an installation is feasible at all: the real electrical draw of the rack and the heat it dissipates into the room.
A rack filled without a power plan leads to breakers tripping at start-up, an undersized UPS and a room too warm to hold operating temperatures in summer. The calculation belongs before the order: active power per device, inrush current at start-up, growth margin, then UPS sizing and heat extraction.
The UPS deserves its own arbitration. IEC 62040-3 distinguishes topologies; the VFI topology, sold as online double conversion, guarantees zero transfer time on a mains failure, where a line-interactive unit introduces a switchover. For servers and core switches, double conversion is the reference. The power factor of professional units sits between 0.9 and 1.0: apparent power in VA is not active power in watts, and runtime is calculated in watts.
One special case is worth knowing: a thermal printer draws far more current than its average consumption at the moment the head heats. Practitioners recommend sizing the UPS feeding it at roughly three times its rated power, and choosing double conversion rather than line-interactive.
Power and technical room reference points
| Criterion | Reference value | Standard or practice |
|---|---|---|
| UPS topology for servers | Online double conversion (VFI), 0 ms transfer time | IEC 62040-3 |
| Output waveform | Pure sine wave | Required by active PFC power supplies |
| Power factor | 0.9 to 1.0 on professional units | VA multiplied by power factor equals watts |
| Battery replacement | Roughly every two years on a live estate | Practice reported by operators |
| UPS for a thermal printer | About three times the printer's rated power | Inrush current of the heating head |
Estate vocabulary, without false friends
- IT estate / IT fleet
- The English equivalents of parc informatique and parque informático. The literal informatic park is not understood and appears in no English-language tender.
- IT hardware / computer equipment
- The correct rendering of matériel informatique and material informático. Never informatic material.
- Workstation / puesto de trabajo
- In Spanish, ordenador de sobremesa is the desktop PC. Torre should not simply become tower: say servidor formato torre for a tower-format server.
- Network cabinet and server rack
- Network cabinet or patch panel rack depending on contents; armario rack or armario de comunicaciones in Spanish. A 19-inch rack is a bastidor 19 pulgadas.
- UPS / SAI / onduleur
- In Spain the official acronym in catalogues and tenders is SAI, for Sistema de Alimentación Ininterrumpida. UPS is understood but little used by local buyers. In French, onduleur is the term; inverter is a false friend that means something else.
- Server room
- Server room or data room; sala de servidores in Spanish, salle informatique in French. Informatic room does not exist.
Frequently asked questions
How do I size a UPS?
In watts, not VA. Add up the active power of each device, apply a growth margin, then check the model's runtime curve at that load. The power factor, 0.9 to 1.0 on professional units, is what links the advertised apparent power to the power actually available.
Double conversion or line-interactive?
Online double conversion for anything that must not be interrupted: servers, core switches, storage, thermal printers. Line-interactive for workstations and equipment that tolerates a switchover. The price difference is justified by the nature of the load, not by the budget available.
Should we buy a second-hand UPS?
No, save for very particular cases. Surge protection components are sacrificial and single-use: after an electrical incident they are degraded with no outward sign. A used UPS can therefore be protection that has already been spent.
How often do batteries need replacing?
Roughly every two years on a live estate, depending on room temperature and cycle count. Older UPS units perform perfectly well on that condition. Battery cost belongs in the operating budget, not in contingencies.
Xeon or EPYC?
That is rarely settled on the processor alone. Per-core licensing of the hypervisor and server operating system can reverse the ranking. We compare hardware plus licences over three years, for the workload you describe.
Do you source storage and NAS as well?
Yes: Synology, QNAP and the storage lines of the major manufacturers. The trade-offs resemble those for servers, with the added questions of backup licensing and the availability of compatible drives at three years.